


Dead Visions In Your Name, Dead Fingers In My Veins

by pxncey



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5255558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pxncey/pseuds/pxncey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was Bucky's blossoming forest in the wrecked city of the orphanage; Steve is his one fragile constant in this destitute modern world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Visions In Your Name, Dead Fingers In My Veins

**Author's Note:**

> title borrowed from slipknot.

He won't eat.

Bucky won't eat, and Steve is scared. He's had to guide Bucky into every necessary daily action so far, even feeding him. He cuts apple into little pieces, as if for a small child, and murmurs encouragement and strokes Bucky's hair while Bucky sits cross legged on the floor and prods at the apple with a metal finger, and it takes Steve at least an hour to coax him to have a piece. He's clearly ravenous, but he's so fucking fragile– he's scared of everything, he's scared of being _alive_.

Bucky stares at the bedroom door, eyes wide and terrified every second of the night, and he won't let the sharp wall of focus drop until Steve slides into bed with him. Even then, he refuses to so much as close his eyes until Steve's arms are enveloping him, and he's drowning in the familiar smell of fresh cotton and honey, just like when they were kids, and Bucky would crawl out of his window and along the ledge to sleep in Steve's room. Steve was his blossoming forest in the wrecked city of the orphanage; Steve is his one fragile constant in this destitute modern world.

Bucky's memories are echoes, carved outlines, slicing flashes of steel and blood, and growled commands in Russian. Sometimes all he wants is to claw himself out of this volatile, broken-glass mind and be what he used to be: The Winter Soldier, a slash of black at dusk and the swiftest kill of the century, with a blissfully emaciated skeleton of a mind. He liked not having to think.

He goes days without uttering a word, and when he does manage to speak, his voice trembles and he can barely make a sound above a frail whisper– but Steve listens, and cares. Bucky knows that he's crumbling inside, destroyed by what his best friend has been broken down to, but he won't say it. He won't say what he needs to say to Bucky.

Bucky thinks he feels it too. Or he did– before. There's an echo of feeling left in him, and he's caught in it like a riptide, strong and wild and unknown. It sounds like love. It doesn't feel like love, it feels like more than that. Bucky feels something precious for Steve. He treasures the rare times his emotions flare up and he can feel warm and real, like a person. He doesn't want to feel like a person really, he wants to feel like The Asset again, but Steve makes feeling like a human okay.

Steve makes everything more than okay.

Bucky knows they'll never be the same, not after what happened, not after the Avengers and the fights. But this– this is progress, and this is as close as they'll get. Bucky treasures it. He knows Steve does too. This is the closest they will come to perfect. _More than okay._


End file.
